“Welcome home, Big Brother…” Itachi Uchiha had barely turned around when Sasuke’s voice came drifting in from beyond the door.
Itachi’s eyes lifted toward the sound, and in an instant a jolt ran through him — his eyes flashed crimson, two black tomoe slowly spinning within them.
“Sa…
Sasuke?!” Sasuke’s figure appeared before them all.
Mikoto Uchiha, who had just been carrying a tray of dishes, froze on the spot, her long-dormant three-tomoe Sharingan flaring to life in shock.
“Did Big Brother want to eat first?
Or bathe first?
Or…
eat me first?!” Dressed head to toe in a cat-themed maid outfit, white stockings on his legs, cat-paw gloves on both hands, and a black cat tail hanging behind him, Sasuke tilted his head and smiled as he recited the line Sakura had specially coached him to say.
Clatter…
The chopsticks Fugaku Uchiha had just picked up fell straight to the floor.
In his eyes, the three tomoe wavered, on the verge of shifting into a Mangekyō.
Fortunately, Fugaku was a man who’d weathered no small number of storms in his life — after a few heavy breaths, he finally reined his Sharingan back under control.
“You ungrateful brat, what exactly have you been teaching your little brother?!” Fugaku glared at Itachi through his Sharingan.
This was the son he’d pinned such high hopes on — the one he’d expected to be just as gifted as his older brother.
And now, this?
So much for prodigious talent.
He’d told Itachi to spend more time teaching Sasuke about shinobi knowledge — and this was what he’d taught him?
…Though, well, Sasuke did look rather adorable like this.
Almost exactly how he and Mikoto used to imagine their hypothetical daughter would look.
No — no, wait, this was his son.
Why in the world was he dressed like that?!
While a thousand thoughts churned through Fugaku’s head, Itachi stood there completely stunned.
How had one day away turned his little brother into this?
And yet…
Sasuke really did look unbearably cute dressed like that.
He kind of wanted to scoop him up and pet him.
Itachi shook his head hard, forcing the stray thought out of his mind, and was about to ask Sasuke what on earth was going on — when his mother suddenly rushed over, beaming, and pulled Sasuke down into a seat at the table.
“Mikoto…” “Honey, don’t you think Sasuke looks adorable like this?” Mikoto cut Fugaku off, her eyes bright with barely-contained delight.
“Don’t you remember?
Wasn’t there a time you really wanted Sasuke to be a girl?” “Uh…” Fugaku fell silent.
Before Sasuke was born — with Itachi already established as their prodigiously gifted eldest son — Fugaku had privately hoped their next child would be a girl.
When Sasuke turned out to be a boy after all, he’d actually felt more than a little disappointed at the time.
“Father, Mother…” Itachi, listening to his parents talk, opened his mouth to say something.
“Big Brother, do you like me like this?” Sasuke tilted his head with a gentle smile, mimicking exactly what Sakura had taught him — raising both hands in front of his chest, the fuzzy cat-paw gloves looking almost unbearably cute.
“Mm, I like it…” Itachi, thoroughly disarmed by that smile, blurted out his honest feelings before he could stop himself.
The moment he caught himself, his normally stern face flushed bright red with embarrassment.
“Well then, no need to keep agonizing over it — since everyone likes it, let’s just let Sasuke dress like this.
It’s not like it’s hurting anything!” Mikoto was overjoyed.
She’d always longed for a sweet, well-behaved little daughter, and when her second child turned out to be another boy, she’d been disappointed for a good long while.
That old dream of hers may never have come true — but Sasuke like this was, at the very least, close enough to finally put her heart at ease.
Fugaku and Itachi both fell quiet after that.
As for Itachi’s own little-brother obsession — well, that hardly needed explaining; he was still more than a little dazed, the impact of Sasuke’s cat-maid outfit having hit him far harder than he cared to admit.
As for Fugaku, he found himself staring at the outfit Sasuke was wearing and quietly starting to wonder whether he ought to go buy one for Mikoto too, just so she could model it for him sometime.
The next day, the moment Sasuke arrived at the shop, Sakura pulled him aside, practically bursting with anticipation.
“So?
How did your brother react?!” “Big Brother seemed really happy.
When I asked him, he said he liked seeing me dressed like that.
Though Mother seemed the happiest of all — and even Father seemed to like it too!” Sasuke replayed Itachi’s reaction in his mind, a small flicker of joy in his chest.
His brother liked seeing him dressed like that — which meant it wouldn’t be long now before he could pull his brother’s attention fully back onto himself, right?!
“Well, if they liked it, then let’s keep up the momentum!” The corner of Sakura’s mouth curled upward, her smile taking on the look of a scheming little devil.
“Tell you what — as long as you keep coming to work at my shop, I’ll make you a few more outfits like that one, so you can win your brother’s attention back that much faster.
Deal?!” “Deal!” As long as it meant getting his brother’s attention back on him, Sasuke would have sold his soul for it without a second thought.
“Perfect!” Sakura beamed.
Once you’d jumped into her trap, there was no climbing back out — and if she happened to ask to snap a few photos later on, just to “check how the outfits were coming along,” surely Sasuke wouldn’t refuse that either, right?!
While Sakura schemed away, digging her pit deeper and deeper for Sasuke to fall into, the mood over in the Hokage’s office was considerably heavier.
“The response from Kumogakure regarding this matter has just come in.
They flatly deny sending anyone to kidnap the eldest daughter of the Hyūga Clan Head, and they’ve sharply demanded an explanation for why we killed the leader of their peace delegation.
Finally, they’ve stated that unless we deliver Clan Head Hiashi’s intact corpse, Kumogakure will declare war on Konoha.” The Third Hokage’s expression darkened.
The Third Shinobi World War had only just ended, and every village was still recuperating — Konoha most of all.
During the war, Konoha had effectively fought several enemies at once, and its lower-ranked shinobi had taken devastating losses.
As for its top-tier fighters — the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, known as the Yellow Flash, had died four years ago during the Nine-Tails’ attack, sealing the beast away with the Reaper Death Seal and dying alongside his wife in the process.
Of the Three Ninja, Orochimaru had defected from the village, Tsunade had long since left Konoha to wander the world, and Jiraiya had gone off chasing after his two former teammates.
Hiruzen himself was no longer young, and on top of all that, relations between the village and the Uchiha clan had grown strained these past few years.
If it truly came down to war with Kumogakure, victory would be far from guaranteed.
“Kumogakure is being far too arrogant.
This means war — we have to teach them a lesson…” As the leading voice of the hawkish faction, Danzo was the first to speak up, practically itching to march out and settle things with Kumogakure once and for all, if only to show them exactly who held the real power.